By BERNAMA / Pic By TMR

The Ministry of Entrepreneur Development (MED) aims to produce 50,000 small and medium entrepreneurs in order to increase their contribution significantly to the country’s GDP growth, said its Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Redzuan Md Yusof (picture).

He said small and medium enterprises (SMEs) currently contribute 37% to the GDP and the target is to increase that to 47% by 2020.

He said in order to achieve the target, the ministry has implemented various initiatives.

“In fact, until December 2018, SME Corp Malaysia — an agency under the MED — had channelled RM7.1 billion to more than 46,000 entrepreneurs in the form of grants and loans,” he told a press conference yesterday after officiating a stock market seminar.

Mohd Redzuan said SMEs made up 98.5% of the business entities in the country with the services sector being the biggest contributor with 89.2%.

He added that 15 SMEs were successfully listed on the Leading Entrepreneur Accelerator Platform (LEAP) since it was launched in 2017.

This included entrepreneurs in the field of information technology and product manufacturing that have the potential to be further developed and exported internationally.

“The LEAP Market will complement other sources of funding such as crowdfunding, peer-to-peer financing and others,” he said. — Bernama